


Bill and the Octodecapus

by yonderdarling



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alcohol, Coitus Interruptus, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gentle Kissing, Gentle Sex, Octopuses, Sleepy Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:29:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonderdarling/pseuds/yonderdarling
Summary: Always knock. Loudly. Always.





	Bill and the Octodecapus

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Matilda and Ilana for proofreading and general cheerleader work!

The Doctor rolls over in the crisp linen sheets, blinks up at the whitewashed ceiling, listens to the crackling fire and the rain pattering softly on the windowpane. He rubs one hand down his face, breathes in the scent of the banked-up fire, the linen, the grass-and-metal smell of Gallifreyans, the scent of oranges -

Wait.

The Doctor rolls onto his stomach, looks to his left. Missy snuffles in her sleep beside him, and he vaguely remembers her letting herself into the room the previous night, kicking him to the side of the bed. Missy wriggles around onto her back, throws one of her arms across his chest, her calloused fingers curling into her palm. The Doctor takes a moment, shifts his own arm, traces his fingers along the blue veins in her wrist. He cups her hand, runs his thumb along her fingertips.

Missy smiles in her sleep, turns to face him, her expression slackening.

"Hi," the Doctor mumbles.

Warm and long-limbed, her hair tangling on the pillows, Missy rolls so she's leaning against him, her leg thrown over his thighs. The Doctor brushes the hair off her forehead, trails a finger down her nose, her philitrum, her lips. He presses his thumb against the corner of her mouth, pulls it so it looks like she's smiling.

"Happy," says the Doctor, and tugs his thumb down. "Sad." Up again. "Happy." Down. "Sad."

"I've killed you before, and I'll kill you again," Missy mumbles, pressing up against him, eyelashes tickling his neck. "Leave me alone."

"You climbed in with me."

"All the other rooms were taken," Missy says. "Shh, shh. Shh."

The Doctor slides his arm under her waist, loops it around her hips. Missy makes a pleased noise, sighs. He closes his eyes and tries to let himself drift again, listening to the pattering rain and the occasional pop from the fire - he lifts his head. It's all down to grey ash and a few glowing embers.

There's a mumbled curse as he extracts himself from Missy, and the Doctor shuffles across the room in his rumpled clothes, pokes about at the embers for a moment before laying some kindling carefully on top. He sits on his haunches and watches it catch, a bright yellow flame, before taking a few more bits of wood from the log basket and arranging them in the fireplace. The rain falls harder outside as he waits, but soon the fire is crackling merrily, and the Doctor shuffles back to bed, noting most of Missy's clothes are strewn over the one good chair in the room.

Missy folds herself back into him when he climbs into the bed, wrapping her legs around one of his own, squeezing his ribs, burying her face in his neck. She presses a damp kiss to his jugular, settles back down.

"I should come to Eleanor's parties more often," says the Doctor. Missy makes a 'shut up' sort of noise. "You climbed in here, you know the risks."

"I do," says Missy, her breath brushing against his neck.

She drops off to sleep, a light doze, and the Doctor is about to fall asleep again too when his vision goes soft and pink.

"You really are relaxed," the Doctor says. "You're still a bit drunk, aren't you."

Missy presses closer to the Doctor, sighs happily. He blinks the pink from his vision - psychic overflow from her dreams -and tries to drop off to sleep himself, closing his eyes. He traces one hand absently down Missy's back, the lace of her underdress soft against his palm, rubs her hip in small circles.

"Good," mumbles Missy. "Good, good." She moves her hand up against his face, her skin smooth, cool palm over his mouth.

The Doctor kisses the base of her thumb gently. Missy hums, squeezes his leg between her thighs. Her lips are still pressed against his neck, and it's all too easy for her to suck lightly at his skin.

"Good, good," she says again, shifting so she's on top of his chest instead of pressed to his side. Their legs entangle again. "Good." Missy dips her head, gently kisses the corner of his mouth, then his chin, the other side of his mouth. "Very good."

The Doctor trails his hand across her hip and back, cups her arse, squeezes. Missy hums happily, trails her lips along his jaw, and the Doctor sucks on her neck, squeezes her arse again.

"Good," she says, drawing the word out, pressing her thigh against his groin.

"Your vocabulary is usually far more expansive than this," the Doctor mumbles.

"I'm feeling languid," Missy replies. "Forgive me for not shouting at you to go harder."

He splutters, laughing into Missy's bare shoulder while she kisses along his hair and the back of his neck.

"You're not usually a complainer," she says, sitting up on the mattress, blinking down at him.

"Oh, that wasn't a complaint," says the Doctor.

He sits too, and Missy leans in and kisses him, licking along his bottom lip. She rubs the front of his trousers, pressing against him.

"Good morning," she adds, and the Doctor slips one of the straps of her underdress off her shoulder, trails his fingers along her collarbone.

"Morning," he says.

"Good, good morning," says Missy again.

Missy pushes him onto his back, lies so they're face to face. She leans forward and kisses him softly, takes his free wrist and guides his hand to her breast. The Doctor runs his thumb over her dark nipple as they kiss, pulling the fabric down so he can touch her bare skin.

"You could have come to me last night," the Doctor whispers.

"You were teaching Ricky the guitar, I was talking politics," Missy says, running her hand up into his hair. She kisses along his jaw, pushing the Doctor onto his back, lying between his legs. "We were both occupied."

The Doctor runs his hand up her thigh, finds she's lost her underwear at some point. He rubs his finger along her slit, dips his head and sucks at her other breast, laving his tongue over her nipple. Missy hums, kisses the top of his head, breathing in the smell of his hair.

"You're thinking pink," the Doctor says, and Missy giggles, shifting on top of him. "No, you were sending it over to me while you were asleep. Pink, and silver - " he kisses her sternum. "Violin strings - "

"I still do the violin strings?"

The Doctor nods. Moves his fingers up her dress again, rubs her clit delicately with one finger. Missy shivers.

"You still do the hum," Missy says. "Like a speaker lying on the ground."

"Good," says the Doctor. "Good, good."

He slips a finger inside her, finds her hot and wet and wanting him, and Missy dips her head and kisses him languidly, sucking on his bottom lip. She shifts, moving so she's on all fours above him, and the Doctor slides another finger into her, grips her shaking thigh with his other hand. He teases her clit with his thumb, moving his fingers inside her.

"Oh, none of this tickle torture again," Missy says, lips brushing his. She gives him one more quick kiss. She exhales, quickly. "Not doing that again."

She sits back on his thighs, _finally_ , unbuttons his trousers and unzips them.

"Tickle torture?" the Doctor asks.

"Do you remember the time with the - up," Missy says, and the Doctor lifts his hips so she can pull his pants and underwear down. "You had me spread out - " she grins when the Doctor shivers, climbs off his legs so he can take his pants off properly. "Almost crying - "

"You were begging - "

Missy's mouth twists, but there's a brief lemon-yellow taste on the tip of his tongue, and he knows she's kidding around. She sits down, presses her folds against his cock, smiling, grinding on him, slow and hot and torturous. The Doctor makes a choked noise.

"Almost begging," she concedes. " _Almost_." She leans down and the Doctor brushes her hair back from her face. Missy kisses him, tasting like lemons and wine and smelling like oranges and metal and that red, red grass.

 

 

*** * ***

 

 

Bill wakes up with drymouth and a killer hangover, draped over one of those fancy tapestry-covered couches in the Great Hall. There's a few people sort of hanging about at the feast table, and some of those giant dogs that rich people always seem to have, with the wiry fur and the expression like they know they're better than you. You know?

She sits, rubs one eye.

"Uck," she says. "Ergh."

Luckily for her, she planned ahead. She does that sometimes when she's not distracted by a really cute girl, or a really cute cat, or that bright yellow raincoat she saw in a TopShop in 2019 and really wants the Doctor to take her back (to the _future_ ) to get. Bill sniffs, rummages through her jacket pocket and comes out with those brilliant headache-rehyrdration-anti-hangover pills Nardole had once given her when they'd both mistaken raspberry-flavoured hypermegavodkas (who knows, that Jack guy the Doctor knew was _mad as_ ) for strawberry milkshakes and slammed them back. Which had been a mistake.

But the pills were brilliant. Bill swallows two, dry, coughs and stumbles over to the table. It's probably not the best idea to mix drugs and booze, but this is alien drugs and medieval booze, so…it was weak wine anyway, by her modern (boxed) standards.

Bill shrugs, picks up what she thinks is her flask from last night and drains it. Right, the Doctor, then Nardole, then the TARDIS, then showering, she thinks, and turns around.

Well, that was easy. Nardole is asleep, snoring on another of the other lounges, one of the dogs under his feet like a warm, smelly cushion.

Okay, so that's Nardole. Bill rubs her eyes again, reaches up and checks her hair is still banging. After a few minutes of finger-combing, it most certainly is. She heads over to the sleeping bald robot….alien….she's not really sure, with Nardole, and shakes his shoulder. The dog slips off the couch and pads off in search of food, and Nardole snorts himself awake.

"Mornin', Bill," he says. "Slept well?"

Bill shrugs. Nardole holds out his hand and Bill knows; puts the pill-packet in his pudgy pale palm. After a few minutes of chewing, Nardole's done with the pills and they're both up and picking over the stale detritus of last night's party.

"Well, there's his guitar," says Nardole, pointing at the neck of aforementioned guitar, sticking out from under the gut of a very chubby older man.

"I reckon that one can stay there," Bill says with a grimace. She sets her hair to rights again, squares her shoulders. "Question number one though, where is the Doctor? Has he popped off to ruminate on Cassiopeia again, because I can't handle it when he tries to help me memorise all the stars in that constellation."

"You have memorised all the stars in that constellation," Nardole says.

"Yeah, but he thinks I should learn them in Newoma," says Bill. "You know, that really pretty language from that one moon of Jupiter - he just says it jingles well. He's a bit wacky, isn't he?"

"Wacky's not the word I'd use," Nardole says.

"Cantankerous and loveable sexless old git?" Bill asks.

"That's the one."

"Still," Bill says, finding a bit of bread and cheese and having a nibble. Not bad, not bad. "Doesn't solve the problem of him being our ride, and us having no idea where he is. He promised we could go to future Tokyo Disneyland, when they have that bubble ride."

"No, that problem is solved," says Nardole. He reaches into his waistcoat and brings out one of the Doctor's myriad screwdrivers, the one that's thicker at one end with the big silver prongs. "He set this up for me. It's a Doctor tracker. It vibrates as you get closer."

"It vibrates?" asks Bill, looking at the metal object. "Couldn't it make….a noise, or something?"

"Why is that a problem?"

"You know it's kind of - " Bill grimaced. "Um. You know what, it's fine, you just can hold it."

"Engaging it now," says Nardole. "Did you see where he went last night?"

"He mentioned having a nap right around the time the King and that woman in the purple started singing Gaelic drinking songs. I think he went upstairs," Bill points, and they head up towards them.

Several flights of stairs, and well-deserved pauses at each landing later, the screwdriver is a blur in Nardole's hand, and they're walking along a stone hallway with a big stain-glass window with an image of Jesus chilling in it. At the third door along, the screwdriver stops dead, and so do Bill and Nardole.

"In here, I suppose," says Nardole. He knocks lightly on the dark, heavy wood, and there's nothing but silence. "No answer."

"Yeah, I figured that much. Should we just like, go in? You go first."

Nardole takes an affronted step back. "Me? Why me?"

"Aren't you like his - braces? No, I mean retainer, you're like his retainer, yeah? That's like a butler. I think it's like a bit Downton. I don't like Downton, though, it was such - "

"I'm his - " Nardole takes a moment to think. "I suppose I count as his inheritance, which makes me feel a little bit less warm to Professor Song, now I think on it. I'm a free elf, not some old antique sideboard to - "

Bill gives up, rolls her eyes and opens the door, rattling the handle loudly.

"Doctor," she says, opening the door a bit too hard. It hits the wall and bounces back - it's how her foster mum always wakes her up, so the Doctor deserves the same treatment for being a layabout - and then she shrieks.

The very naked Doctor sort of yelps and throws himself off the woman, which means Bill can see - well, everything and anything and _everything_ -and then the Doctor grabs the blankets and covers himself, which is a Very Good Plan, and the very naked, dark-haired woman sprawled on the bed shouts something too, flings a pillow that misses Bill and Nardole but takes out an ornamental vase. There's yelling and screaming and swearing, and Bill realises it's mostly coming from her own mouth.

"Shit. Shit! Sorry! Shit! Shit!" Bill yelps, shutting her eyes and fumbling for the door handle, trying to mentally erase the images of the Doctor's old man bum and old man balls and his scarred back, all out of her poor, traumatised mind. There's still screaming and yelling and she's pretty certain it's all coming from her mouth. "Bollocks! Sorry! I mean - shit!"

"Move," says Nardole tiredly, reaching round Bill and shutting the door. "Ah - "

Bill turns and numbly hustles back down the corridor, the eyes of Jesus burning into her back and the image of the Doctor's bare bum burning into her brain. She heads straight back down to the dining hall and finds one of the surviving glasses of wine, throws that back, hangover be damned. Some alien drugs just aren't good enough.

"Jesus," says Bill, and Nardole just nods. "Ah, _shit_."

"Yes."

"That was disturbing," Bill says eventually, slumping back on the couch with another improvised cheese sandwich and a glass of flat apple cider (got to get those vitamins in).

"Oh, you get used to it," Nardole says, disturbingly casual, sitting beside her and eating an apple.

"Why you so casual?"

"I lived with the Doctor and River, you know. For a while. You learn to knock, loudly. Suppose I just forgot," says Nardole. "Then again, River was usually. Very." He takes his glasses off and polishes them on his shirt. "Ahem. Vocal."

"Was - was that River?" Bill asks. "I thought River was - I, I think that woman had dark hair. I wasn't looking at her hair. I wasn't looking. I'm only 80 percent certain that was a human woman. Oh God, was that even a human woman? Not to be like, elitist or phobic of anything, I just mean like - "

"No, that wasn't River."

Bill finishes her sandwich. Nardole finishes his apple. He chews super loudly, and the tension makes Bill want to kill him ever more than usual. A few servants come in and out of the room, cleaning up some of the detritus.

The Doctor emerges eventually, his clothes and hair rumpled, and a very displeased look on his face. He clears his throat, nods at both of them

"Never to be mentioned again, I'm guessing," says Nardole, and Bill launches into an extruded apology that goes unheard when the Doctor strides off towards the TARDIS. "Come on," Nardole adds. "I think we all need a lie down somewhere more comfortable."

"There's not some kind of retina bleach in there, is there?" Bill asks.

"Yes, actually," says Nardole. "Got some right here - "

Bill throws up her hands. "No! Kidding! Kidding! Kidding!"

 

 

*** * ***

 

 

The Incident, as Bill calls it, goes unspoken between the occupants of the TARDIS at any and all times. Bill doesn't mention the Incident to her friends or family either - except when she gets super drunk with Heather one night (Heather's back, Heather's alright, and that's a story and half of epic proportions for another time, and they're taking it slow and it's wonderful) and ends up blurting out the whole story, her shoulders shaking and tears rolling down her cheeks as she laughs, because she'd made such a point of knocking every time she's even near a door with the Doctor that she nearly got them both killed by some kind of robot octopus with eighteen tentacles -

"Can something be an octopus with eighteen tentacles?" Heather asks, head lolling onto the coffee table. "Like - "

"A - fuckin - " Bill counts on her fingers.

Heather counts on her own. "Octo-deci-deco-robo-tentacolo-bot. Alien."

"Aliens," says Bill. "Old man bits. And his bum."

Heather bursts out laughing, slaps her palm on the table, snorting. "Old man bits."

Bill shudders, knocks back the last of her blue fruity tingle drink with the lollies in it. It's got a lot more vodka than the last one. Heather rubs her shoulder, and suddenly there's a lot more interesting things to do than talk about the Doctor's sex life.

 

 

*** * ***

 

 

There's some kind of invasion of Earth, months and months later, with like - plastic mannequins that come out of the shops, and there's a thing with a chair that eats people, because it's made of plastic. That happens while Bill is alone at uni, and the Doctor begs her, proper begs her, to stay with the Vault, and so she does.

It's getting late in the evening when that Kate Stewart woman (who is well fit on her own, but Bill knows the look of someone who is way out of her league) comes by to collect her.

"The Doctor said you'd only come with me or him," Kate says, gesturing towards the UNIT jeep. "Come on, the Doctor wants to see you're okay."

"He could have come himself," says Bill, only she loves being ferried around in the UNIT jeeps with a police escort, like a celebrity, it's wicked fun, so and she follows Kate in her trenchcoat and swaggery slacks and they drive off to the Tower of London.

"It was the Mistress," says Kate at one point, and Bill nods like she totally knows what's going on. "She's pulled this with the Autons before. Among other things. This isn't her first visit to Earth. So - I don't suppose the Doctor's considering letting UNIT know what's in that Vault of his? We can't get near it."

"I think you just answered your own question there," says Bill, embracing the chance to be delightfully urbane and enigmatic.

They take Bill down into the jailblock, which in all honesty, does set off her Racial Profiling alarm a little, until she and her guards round a corner and the Doctor is sitting on a little plastic stool opposite a heavy metal door with a little window in it. He stands as she approaches, and the guards depart.

"It's a one-way mirror," says the Doctor, gesturing at the window. "She can't see us."

"I know you're there!" shouts the alien from the other side of the door.

"What is she?" Bill asks, stepping down the corridor tentatively.

"A Time - Lady. Like a Time Lord, but…a Lady," says the Doctor. "She wants to rule the universe, and she'll do anything to get her hands on it."

"That's kind of obvious."

"What, that she's a Time Lady?"

"Well, no, but like - I figured Time Lord was more like a title thing, what _is_ your species?"

The Doctor turns back to look into the cell. "Gallifreyan."

"So you're Gallifreyan Time - Lords - bit gender essentialist, really, the Lord and Lady thing." Bill shuffles a bit further along the corridor, trying to look in the window without looking like she's looking in the window.

"Time Gentry," says the Doctor. "Just look, Bill, it's fine. Those were Autons, those plastic things. She's tried that one before. Doesn't ring any bells with you, does it?"

"Living plastic? Kate mentioned it, doesn't mean I understand it."

The Doctor nods, shoves his hands in his pockets.

"Nah," says Bill. "I mean, that's the point of plastic. It's dead. You know, dead dinosaurs." She finally picks up the courage, looks in the window.

The woman sits primly on the bolted-down seat in the corner of the cell, legs crossed, buffing her nails with her handkerchief. There's a strange sense of familiarity niggling in the back of her mind. The woman tucks her handkerchief back into her pocket, smooths her hair back, examines her nails again. Bill steps back.

"She's a Time Lady."

"Yes. The - Missy. Her name is Missy. The Mistress."

Bill purses her lips, looks up at the Doctor, who's become very interested in the ceiling. "I thought you were the only Time Dude running about the universe with no rules, regulations or oversight."

"I have oversight!"

"Oh yeah?" Bill asks, looking back in the window. As if sensing her, the woman looks up at the window and pokes her tongue out, waggles it around. "Doctor?"

"Bill."

Bill takes one last look in the window, and her mouth falls opens in shock.

"That's her, right? That's the woman I saw you….with…."

"Yes."

"That one….time, you know - " Bill sort of holds her palms parallel to each other, presses them together.

"Yes."

"In the castle."

"Yes, _I remember_."

"Did - "

"Yes."

Bill crosses her arms. "How could you possibly know what I was going to ask."

"Fine," says the Doctor. "What were you going to ask?"

Bill takes a deep breath, puts her hands on her hips. She read an article saying that if you stand like Wonder Woman, you gain the confidence of Wonder Woman. Power posing. Or something like that. It's working. Kind of.

"I dated this girl once," she says, and the Doctor makes a tutting noise because he hates all her dating stories but she likes telling them because she _knows_ , even though the Doctor acts like an asexual grey-haired caterpillar, she reckons someone who is ten billion years old and travels through space and time as a hobby probably has the single most chequered sexual history in the universe.

"I dated this girl once, and she was great. Really attractive, like, I just could not stop thinking about her. She was a redhead. This was at high school, so dating was like, you know, chips, twice, at the shops, and a snog at Teghan Jobsen's sixteenth birthday after a couple of cups of disgusting stolen wine. I mean, that stuff was _foul_."

"Yes," says the Doctor, his voice carrying with it the weight of aeons. "And your point is?"

"My point is, stolen wine. She was a shoplifter. She would just nick stuff, all the time. You had to watch your bag round her, she'd steal stuff from the Tescos and the two-bob shop," Bill says, still watching the Doctor watching the screen with this so-called Mistress in her little cell, on her little chair, sitting and knocking her heels together like Dorothy, only she's not wishing to go home. "And if you weren't careful, she'd rope you in with it. My friends all told me not to go out with her."

"Is there a point to this?"

"Yeah."

"Then get to it."

"Did you know she was a crazy psycho-universe-ruler-wannabe chick before you shagged her?" Bill asks in one breath.

"Yes."

"And you shagged her anyway?"

The Doctor makes a low, quiet noise, one of pain and untold suffering and anguish.He sighs. "Yes. But, Bill, you must understand. It's not about - we've known each other a long time, she's one of my own species; we're old friends, and old enemies, and they're the same thing after the first two millennia - "

He pauses, seeing Bill hold her hand up. In the cell, the woman stands up, red lipstick, tangled dark hair, blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass.

"What?"

"Doctor," says Bill. "I'm not even judging you. I'd hit that too."

 

 

 

 

*** * ***

 

 

 

 

Kate sits in her office, watching the security footage from the cells while sipping on a cup of tea. She watches the Doctor watching the Mistress, watches the conversation between Bill and the Doctor. Watches Bill walk away.

Kate rewinds the footage and watches Bill's strange little hand motion. She rewinds it again and watches the Doctor's face, as he watches Bill's strange little hand motion. Bill walks away, the Doctor watches after her. Then he looks back in the little window, frowning. She can tell from the set of his shoulders.

She sighs and turns off the monitor, picks up her mug and holds it between her palms. Kate stands, turns and looks at the portrait of her father that hangs on the wall behind her desk. He stares out at her. She's always thought he looks slightly irritated. Kate sighs again, feeling rather dramatic. She stares at her dad. She looks back at the monitor. She looks at the portrait of her father again, his annoyed expression, and remembers his stories about the Doctor and the Master from the 1970s and 1980s. And then, the realisation hits her.

"Sweet Jesus," says Kate Stewart. "They're fucking again."

 

 

_FIN._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by all those posts floating round tumblr that are variations on "Bill's going to have a gay heart attack when she sees Missy." Hope you enjoyed it, and comments/feedback are always appreciated!


End file.
